Archive for September, 2008

I hate the job but I do it, I show up, I don’t call out 3 times a week because I have the sniffles.

Unlike Samuels.

Samuels is a fatassed ignorant cretin at the job. I can’t believe this fucking dickwad was ever in the Army. We can’t depend on a man to show up for a crappy job, how did he ever cover someone’s ass in the desert? The Army didn’t want him any longer. Now I see why.

Samuels has racked up more than enough missed days to be fired. He should be. There’s no excuse for being a lazy jerkoff in a rotten economy, when any number of people looking for work deserve the job more.

You should hear the excuses Samuels has used for being a no-show.

One time he told a story of breaking down 50 miles outside of town, during a heavy rainstorm. It could’ve been true, except the more elaborate and detailed Samuels’ tale became the more it sounded like a lie. That and his unusual defensiveness.

The last time double-chinned Samuels was a no-show he claimed to have been so sick he slept in the bathtub because there wasn’t a bucket big enough for all his puking up. The guy is 6’2 and 310 pounds, much of that blubber. Yet we should believe a little puke slowed him down?

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a liar.

Samuels has a Plan: attend the 3 weekend training classes to become qualified to catch bailjumpers. Ha ha ha. Samuels, you fat fuck, you’re too lazy and incompetent to do even a tedious job now: where will you find the self-employed motivation to catch bailjumpers? I hope you surprise the bailjumpers in their lairs, Samuels. If you’re as big a sloth on that job as you are this one, you won’t get the drop when the bailjumpers pull their guns. Your pointed, slick-backed head will be reduced to fine red mist. At 300+ pounds, you won’t be chasing anyone on foot either, unless you expect them to pass out from laughing hysterically at the sounds of your labored huffing and puffing.

“HUHH-EHH-HUHH-EHH…COME BACK…HUHH-EHH-HUHH-EEHH…I WAS INNA ARMY…HUHH-EHH-HUHH-EHH…MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF…HUHH-EHH-HUHH-EEHH.”

Samuels, I would’ve killed you today for the uncalled-for words escaping your fat blubber lips but at the time they escaped them murder was still illegal in this state. You’re a failure, Samuels, a tits-on-a-mule fat slacker fuckfaced fraud. Get lost, so the tedious, awful job can go to someone who’ll have the guts to do it.

I stood next to my car in a surreal neighboorhood. On one side of the street were small houses with well-manicured lawns. I was parked in a GUEST spot of the dodgy housing complex across the street while Julio, a friend from work who was 10 years younger than me, looked over my 12-year-old car. Both he and his still younger brother Sal seemed to love my model of car, they’d turned some of them into racers. They knew exactly what they were talking about while I, with minimal knowledge, was cartarded.

The Florida sun was its typical gluey asshole self, though there was some nice breeze as both young men admired the engine. They’d already figured out the source of a rattle a mechanic 30 years older than all of us I took it to never found. Sal was still tinkering when Julio left to pick up his kids from school.

An 80K Mercedes pulled into the spot on the other side of the empty space where I stood sipping ice water from a plastic pink tumbler the brothers had brought me earlier. Though the Black woman driving the ‘Cedes did not look like she could afford her ride and took no notice of us, I felt shame at my own car’s beat-up condition, even though, as Sal pointed out, I loved it and had it longer than a marriage.

As I took another swig of this and brought the cup down something crashed into my chest, striking my sternum with the force of a flicked pinkie finger. I looked down, saw the color brown and flinched. throwing the cup’s entire contents into the sky, a momentary crystal geyser.

The brown thing bounced away, hit the pavement and began scuttling–a flying roach!–its ugly carapace shining in the bright summer sun. I wanted to scream but I’d just met Sal and the fat Black woman still sat in her cream-white coupe, bumping low-volumed, noxious R&B.

“Kill it!” Sal hollered playfully. I was too frozen, too in shock to move. Horror and confusion were my world. It was 2 in the afternoon on a hot, sunny day; a roach was as out of place as a bundled Eskimo in Iraq. He skittered away on foot (or leg) while I stood frozen. I couldn’t step on a roach, not even with shoes on, and anyway, similar to George Costanza’s “deal” with the pigeons, I wouldn’t kill any insects out of doors (mosquitos excluded).

Julio returned. His cute kids, a boy and a girl, were munchkin-sized with huge heads and went upstairs before the Ice Cream man drove up the street, the (c)rap from his stereo even
drowning out the ice cream tunes. Julio told us the guy was always at the local park on the 1st and 15th, blasting Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
“On his stereo?”
“No! On the loudspeakers!”
Surreal.

The fat Black woman egressed her German sled and entered one of the duplexes. Julio commented the car was probably a boyfriend’s. Though I didn’t say it aloud, it made cops’ jobs easier to find the drug dealers with cars like that in front of faded duplexes in the ‘hood.

Throughout the day’s ops I snapped digital pics of my beloved car with my Kodak v550, a gift from my editor/webmaster/gifted photographer/longstanding Texan friend. I lifted the cam to take another shot of the disassembled door panel when I noticed the LCD screen mired in shadow. When I held it up to the strong sunlight, the shadow stayed.

I felt my guts sag.

The screen was cracked as if some tiny punk kid inside the camera had hit a home run and a pea-sized baseball had struck the glass, starring it. This morning the cam started out working flawlessly as it had the last 3.5 years. I’d already taken 20 shots (the memory card held a thousand) and there’d been no trauma or anything unusual done to it, in fact, I was holding it most of the afternoon.

I didn’t bother showing Julio the damage. Time ran out. I’d lost a camera but gained a replacement knob for my window crank. More work is to be done tomorrow.

It’s events like those of today that cause one to seriously ponder the sucking undertow under the roiling ocean of life. After years of neglect, I finally take steps to help my poor old car’s infirmities with a too-good-to-be-true honorable guy who enjoys working on my type of car, only to suffer two inexplicable lightning bolts of horror and bizarre bad fortune. Between the roach from nowhere and the undeserving death of my beloved camera, I can’t help but feel screwed, though tomorrow my car may run somewhat better.

More than the big disasters like quakes and cyclones, it’s these little tragedies that enforce the theory of a sinister balance to the universe. Intellectually I understand why shit happens, but I refuse to accept that any shit has to happen to me. How human.

I should’ve ended it all
when I was callous and clueless
but I didn’t have the trigger
or the gun.

I was told to wait, or not to think about it at all.

Now I have the means but not
the nuts…

Reading an article about unhappy marriages
made me mourn someone else’s unhappy union
though she wouldn’t have chosen me before the Ring
and didn’t
after.

I think she fucked death metal artists.
Now I hate them even more than they pretend to hate God,
speaking of which,
if the Buddha delivered pizza
would he guarantee
an end to suffering
in 30 minutes or less?

Somewhere some group is always being accused of being sitting ducks. Well, let me tell you people something. DUCKS NEED TO SIT DOWN ONCE IN AWHILE. It’s not all quacking and swimming and flying in V formation to Miami! Who are YOU to demand ducks always be moving around? They’re not sharks, you know.

When I first saw him he reminded me of a failed auditioner for a boy band, mostly because of the his white t-shirt underlying a thin print-pattern shirt with open sides billowing as if underwater as he paced, seemingly lost.

When I saw him again he was loudly singing songs referencing Jesus. Those around him seemed disturbed by this, but he was in his own world. He was there because he had a problem with something, and because I was at work, it was now my problem and job to help. As I helped him he asked, “Have you been Saved?” I wasn’t looking at him when I answered, “Well, I’m working here…” Meaning “Fuck No”.

Up close, Boy Band’s face was smooth and fresh but his eyes were puffy and tired. He explained how he was now 25 and had done every drug possible and hit bottom before trying God. And lo, Jesus had Saved him!

While not technically a Christian myself, I believed that Christ Jesus had indeed helped Boy Band, along with the peer pressure of the church, but I didn’t think the experience made Boy Band any smarter or more lucid; whatever potential he had before frying his circuits with drugs would remain lost. Well shit, he was only 25. Why judge?

I was mildly insulted that a “ki-dult” (25 is the real beginning of adulthood) would preach to someone older (me) but Boy Band’s torpid joy seemed real enough, and those Saved early on have a much harder road ahead of them than those who convert later (after fucking and drugging, sins denied me due to hating people).

Being at work, I only offered grunts of acknowledgment. As a customer, Boy Band could say whatever he wanted, while I was a slave. No employee enjoys this imbalance but then, I really didn’t have anything to add to his sluggish exuberance. If I wanted to risk losing the job I would’ve told Boy Band my minority opinion, which as a fundamentalist/former-druggie-now-Saved he would’ve found unacceptable: Jesus Christ is the answer, but not the only answer, there are infinite paths to God.

Boy Band said he’d say a prayer for me that night.

That was yesterday and I feel no different. I hope the positive effects of his prayer are delayed because tonight is another lottery drawing and the pot is 37 mil.

**** ********

Christ alone will never do it for me. I’m personally offended that He would deign to heal broken hearts when He Himself never tasted the pain of a variety of human failures, including rejection from a woman loved.

Now older than Christ at the time of his exit, I await death with the curse of a healthy body. Suicide would just leave God with a way to change the subject for calling Him out on the many, many fucked-up and stupid ways things are run around here.

So I wait, while somewhere out there Boy Band plans to be a counselor helping drug addicts. I am confident God has a few surprises left for both of us. It’s why I own a gun.

Rich in flavor, these “Onion Blossom” Pringles did indeed taste like the deep-fried onion appetizers found at most brass-n-fern restaurants. WINNAH!

When I first saw this box of strawberry Whoppers I imagined exactly how they would taste (delicious). They proved dangerously addictive. Any candy that comes in a pourable carton (not shown) can’t be good for you. WINNAH!

I didn’t originally intend to put Wendy Whoppers in here, but what the hell, I’m not being paid either way for these reviews so I might as well create more hits with her tits. As a bonus, I’ll spare you any jokes about wanting to spray her whoppers with malted milk from my balls. DOUBLE WIN!

These Chocolate Skittles really do taste like what they’re supposed to taste, yet I discommend them for myriad reasons:

* The soft-crunchy/firm-chewy texture doesn’t work for chocolate.

* A handful of different-flavored regular Skittles eaten at once blend together, creating a synergistic singular fruit flavor never intended by Ma Nature. But sorting vanilla/brownie batter/chocolate caramel/chocolate pudding/s’mores is too much to ask of any taste bud.

* The Skittles brand and rainbow don’t go with chocolate, just like there should never be fruit-flavored m&m’s. The makers were too lazy to make up a new product name? How ’bout…

(No, I didn’t make this awesome p-shop. I think you can even buy “Shittles” as a t-shirt).

I bought Chocolate Skittles 2-for-1 at a dollar store, so I guess they’re already on their way out. FAIL.

I like Peanut m&m’s enough to ignore their numbfuck characters and dumber commercials but this cheating box is a sodomite’s dream.

Normally m&m’s come packed to the hilt so they RATTLE in the box. Not these bastards in their silent F-U-in-the-A mini-bag. 3.4 ounces is so little candy an anorexic could eat them all and not bother puking. That yellow son-of-a-bitch on the box giving the thumbs up should be wearing a strap-on.

We get enough shit from all sides these days we shouldn’t have to watch our backs when we buy candy. FAIL.

Hope you enjoyed these reviews. These words I write are a bookmark of sorts, marking the place where I’m supposed to have a success-filled life.